Gary Glauber: Advisor

Gary Glauber: Advisor

He was an odd choice for mentor,
afflicted with a sort of stoic sadness.
Years in that stone hut,
surrounded by worldly tomes,
provided a backdrop of daunting reminders:
earlier days of great academic promise
never fully achieved.
Instead, real life intervened.
He had been married twice,
deserted by one,
losing the other to illness,
and these losses grayed
both his hair and his attitude.
These days he doted on
his daughter, a quiet child
who never recognized
her own beauty
among a pride
of loud boastful friends.

He would pour sherry for two
when I arrived, and always
started our sessions by reading
a paragraph from some philosopher
whose work was new to me.
Perhaps in me he saw
parts of his younger self,
idealism and relative innocence,
a vibrant passion for literature.
Life hadn’t yet provided
its unpredictable beatings,
and so he tempered
his jaded purviews,
choosing words carefully,
suffering my exuberance kindly.

His voice held authority;
each statement offered truth.
In teaching, he became young again,
expressing vivid opinions
on a host of other writers,
their foibles and flaws,
the limits their pieces exposed.
He had lost patience with fiction
and its self-important meanderings,
preferring anthropological treatises
about primitive cultures,
full of fascinating findings.
He had many post-graduate degrees,
framed and lending credence
to his gruff censures.

Our sessions would end
with him wishing me well,
sending me off into the evening rain
feeling somehow better prepared
to return to my books,
my critiques and papers,
the arsenal of the serious student
keen on making the best
of a university’s offerings.
His was the wisdom of experience.
He retired soon after,
perhaps no longer able
to find any to appreciate
his acerbic proclamations,
mistaking such fervid rants
as the bitter excuses and alibis
of an acrimonious man.

Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. He champions the underdog to the melodic rhythms of obscure power pop. His collection, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) is available through Amazon, as is a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press).